


Knowing Me, Knowing You

by Heizpilz



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Amnesia fic, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Future Fic, M/M, No Smut, Stiles has finished college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-19 21:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10648113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heizpilz/pseuds/Heizpilz
Summary: Derek gets hit by a spell which takes away his memory and Stiles does the exact opposite of what you might expect.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Afterwards Stiles can’t even say what made him do it, only that it was a split second decision.

At the same time as the witch, or whatever he is, disappears into nothing, Derek is flung through the air by a spell. There’s a worrying crunching sound when his head hits some dwarf wall in the derelict warehouse they’re in. Stiles has a delayed reaction because, yeah, he’s kind of gotten used to the werewolves around him getting hurt and simply shaking it off but then he realizes the ominous silence and _stillness_ and his world comes crashing down. All he can think is, _no, no, no, no, no! Please don’t do this to me! Not now! Not ever! Get up! Please!_ For a few dreadful, utterly helpless seconds Derek just lies there with his head bent at a sickening angle before slowly arching his back to straighten his neck and finally sitting up, his hand giving the back of his head a hard rub.

“Dude, did you just break your neck?” Stiles asks incredulously and can’t help a feeling of awe before his profound relief is replaced by a very familiar seething anger. He’s beyond sick of Derek rushing in with no regard for life or limb where any halfway sane person would fear to tread. His antics are wearing decidedly thin. After trailing this druid, wizard, _whatever_ , for two weeks they’ve neither worked out what he is yet nor what kind of magic he uses. Spells? Hexes? Curses? Enchantments? No matter. None of it is pleasant and Derek has been getting hurt, maimed and mangled on a regular basis, much to Stiles’s chagrin.

It doesn’t help that the two of them have been alone on this hunt. Everyone else thought that chasing the problem out of Beacon Hills would suffice. Only Derek and Stiles felt that it was too dangerous to let loose on the world. So they set out together, almost accidentally, chasing after him in the jeep until suddenly they were two states over with nothing to show for it except increasingly violent encounters. Derek breaking his neck being a case in point. Stiles knows how strong and resilient werewolves are, but he’s also very aware that they’re by no means unbreakable, thank you very much.

“Did you know you could do that?” he asks accusingly as if Derek planned on getting injured this way. Of course Derek didn’t. He never does. He just blithely takes risks, shoving Stiles out of the line of danger and not caring about himself. Stiles will give him a piece of his mind about that and then he’ll get in his jeep and go back home and if Derek isn’t fast enough, he can just walk back to California. Or get himself killed on this stupid hunt as long as Stiles doesn’t have to watch. He is _done_.

And then suddenly it’s the next moment and everything happens within just a few seconds.

Derek shakes his head somewhat bewildered, saying, “I don’t think so. I don’t even know how I did that.”

All of a sudden Stiles feels shaky and wrecked, missing his cue to verbally lay into Derek for his stubbornness and his stupidity because he realizes that yes, it _was_ just as close a call as it looked.

Meanwhile Derek gets up slowly, still a little dazed or maybe still working on pulling his body back together, until he stands not five feet away, blinking in confusion and says, “And who are you? Do I know you? What are we doing here?”

Not for one second does Stiles think this is some kind of misguided prank based on Derek’s propensity to misread moods and trying to make a joke when Stiles wants to rip him apart for scaring him like that. He just knows with complete certainty that this is real, that Derek has no idea who he is, that the questions are genuine. “I’m Stiles.”

“Stiles? Is that a code name? Do we have code names? Is this some kind of mission? I feel like there’s a purpose to us being here.” Derek sounds kind of gleeful, like a he’s on an exhilarating adventure.

And that’s the moment when Stiles makes a decision. Or not so much makes a decision as has a sudden realization of what he should do. Or not do. It’s pure frustration that makes him settle on being as unhelpful as possible just for the sheer hell of it, to pay Derek back for what he puts Stiles through on a regular basis.

“It’s a nickname. You can’t pronounce my real name. What do you remember?”

Derek scratches the back of his head with an endearingly befuddled expression he’s never exhibited before. “I can’t seem to remember anything much. Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Derek.” When there’s not much more than a frown in reaction, Stiles carries on. “That’s what you said. I only met you last night. We’re hunting the same thing, so we teamed up. Much good that it did us.”

“So we _are_ on a mission? _Awesome_.”

“Yep. Awesome,” Stiles repeats suppressing a snicker. Awesome is a word he’s only ever heard Derek use when he’s mocking the teenagers he’d surrounded himself with but definitely never with such delight. “Let’s get out of here before Larry comes back,” he says.

“Larry?” Derek falls into step with him without any hesitation.

“Well, we... I haven’t worked out who or what he is yet, so I had to call him something. Larry’s as good a name as any.”

Stiles leads them towards the jeep. While putting his hunting paraphernalia – his bat and some herbs in breakable containers for throwing – on the backseat, he manages to grab the wallet and phone from Derek's leather jacket and put them in the back pockets of his jeans. Derek meanwhile is deriding Roscoe as a rust bucket that no one in their right mind would entrust their life to but gets into the passenger seat nonetheless.

“Would you like to walk?” Stiles asks sardonically.

Derek puts up both hands in surrender. “Since I have no idea where we’re going I’d rather not. Tell me what you know. I’m sure it’ll all come back to me. I just knocked my head a little.” He’s still smiling openly. There’s no suspicion, no worry, just a weirdly inappropriate amusement.

“Why aren’t you freaked out?” Stiles asks. “I mean you don’t know me from Adam. You don’t even know who _you_ are. We’re in the middle of nowhere and you’ve just recovered from a nasty attack. Why are you so zen about it?”

Derek grins and honest to god puts one foot up against the dashboard. “What’s to worry? I just recovered from a broken neck. I’m obviously indestructible. I’m thinking _superhero_.”

“You are NOT indestructible! You’re a freaking werewolf, that’s what you are and there’s plenty of things that can destroy you.” That was probably not the most delicate way to impart that particular revelation but the expected incredulous guffaw or outraged denial doesn’t materialize. Stiles shoots a glance at Derek, whose eyebrows are raised with one corner of his mouth creased in a ‘gotcha’ smile.

“Do you really think I don’t know I’m a werewolf?”

Stiles has to admit that it makes sense. People don’t wake up with amnesia and question whether they’re human. Why should it be any different for werewolves? “Yeah, sorry, dude.”

During the drive Stiles concocts a story about how they just met at a bar the night before, had a few drinks and decided to hunt Larry together. He leaves the information about himself a little vague but basically true and pretends he knows nothing about Derek because they supposedly only just met. Contrary to what the pack always tells him, he’s actually quite a good liar when it counts. He has enough imagination to not falter in his tale and a good enough memory not to forget what he said. But Derek is a werewolf. And he’s looking at Stiles a little askance now.

“What?” Stiles asks challengingly. He can bluff this out. He won’t let this opportunity pass to have a little bit of fun at Derek’s expense.

Derek huffs a laugh. “Nothing.” He leans over to twiddle with the stereo.

“Hey! Driver picks the music.”

“That wasn’t music.” A new station tunes in, blaring out some rock anthem Stiles only barely recognizes. “ _This_ is music.” A quick flick increases the volume to almost double.

Just as Stiles is about to turn his own playlist back on, he stops when Derek starts to sing along. He has never done that before. A light tapping of fingers or a foot was the closest he’s ever come to show his enjoyment of music. Stiles stares at him. Derek’s voice can carry a tune but he’s mostly just trying to be as loud as possible all the while grinning at Stiles like a demented pixie and headbanging. _Headbanging._ Stiles can’t help laughing as he scrambles for his cell phone to take a video of this momentous occasion because nobody will believe him otherwise. Derek doesn’t seem to mind and that may just be the weirdest part of it all.

Twenty minutes later Stiles parks his jeep outside the motel room they rented last night, going through everything in his head that could give away his lies. He tosses Derek his leather jacket and pretends not to notice how Derek pats it down for anything personal. The wallet and phone in his back pocket seem to be burning a hole into his jeans. What is he even doing?

They enter the room and Stiles gives it a quick survey. It’s a mess, with clothes everywhere, books and papers on various surfaces and the bed in such a state of disarray that the sheet is barely on. _Ah yes._ Stiles is strangely embarrassed as if he’s invited a visitor into his room but forgot to tidy when in reality it’s _their_ room and its condition is definitely down to both of them.

Derek’s bag is in one corner with some clothes spilling out while Stiles’s is almost empty, its contents strewn over the floor of one half of the room after he was trying to locate _uhm... something_ in a hurry last night. He blushes and half-heartedly tries to use his feet to push his stuff into a semblance of order while sneaking a look at Derek.

Derek has remained near the door, taking a good look – and probably a good sniff – around and his lips are pursed in a sardonic smirk when he considers the bed.

Stiles blushes even more furiously. “I’ll go have a shower.”

By the time he's clothed again, he’s come to a decision. He will let this play out for tonight and decide by tomorrow morning if he should end the charade. His conscience is tugging at him but he’s never been good at the ethical stuff. Being the moral compass was always Scott’s domain. He doesn’t need to wonder what his best friend would recommend in this situation. It’s so glaringly obvious. Just tell Derek already. But then again Scott doesn’t know Derek like Stiles does. Doesn’t even like him all that much. The spell must wear off at some point and until then Stiles is determined to get as much entertainment as possible out of the situation.

When he comes out of the bathroom, their room is empty. “Derek?” he says stupidly as if Derek might be hiding under the bed, which is now made up neatly. With a wave of panic Stiles opens the front door and runs outside. _Shit! Fuck! And double fuck!_ The jeep is gone! What was he thinking leaving Derek alone with his keys when Derek has no memory of him and therefore not an ounce of loyalty?

He rushes back into the room to start packing his bag, mainly grabbing everything and squeezing it in, which turns out harder than expected. Well, if Derek has stolen his jeep then Stiles will have no qualms using Derek’s credit card to go back to California. When he closes his bag, he sits on the floor suddenly fighting to remain calm as the walls, _the whole world_ , is closing in on him. _Derek left. Derek has no idea who he is and he just left. Does he even remember how to drive? What if... he could get hurt... or worse... and... you must find him... how are you gonna find him... what if you’re too late... Derek... all the things that could happen... and... hunters... and...._

 _“Stiles!_ Listen to my voice. You’re in a motel room, Stiles. It’s just you and me here. You remember me. I’m Derek. You know I won’t hurt you. And I won’t let anyone else hurt you. Stiles. _Breathe._ You know I can protect you. Breathe in slowly, Stiles. Just listen to my voice. Everything’s fine. _You’re okay. Everybody’s okay. Just listen and breathe._ In and out. In and out. Good. Again. In and out...”

Finally Stiles comes back to himself. And Derek’s here, talking in a calm voice, one hand cupping Stiles’s neck, the other on his shoulder.

“Derek.”

“Yeah, buddy. I’m here. Everything’s fine. You’re good now?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Fuck this is embarrassing. “Where did you go? In _my_ car?” He gives Derek a shove to cover his awkwardness and his relief.

“Well, if you wanna call it a car…” Derek chuckles and slowly, almost reluctantly lets go to stand up. “I got pizza. There was some money on the dresser. And I got beer. That is if you’re old enough to drink.” He walks over to the bathroom door to look at himself in the mirror. “How old do you think I am? Did I say? I didn’t even get carded.”

“One, you look way older than twenty-one. And two, you could have said where you were going.” Stiles gets up off the floor a little shakily to sit on the bed and flips the pizza box open. “How did you know what to do just now?” He folds two pizza pieces into a sandwich and takes a small bite. His heart is still beating frantically and his lungs have that weird feeling as if he’s been breathing very cold air for a long time. He’s not sure if he’s even hungry.

Derek joins him on the bed and grabs a slice for himself. “Don’t know. I seem to have retained most things. I know what date it is. Where we are. How to drive. How money works. I just can’t remember anything about myself at all. So I’m thinking spell. Because if it was medical, my body should have fixed it by now.”

Good point. He watches Derek as he gets up to rifle through his bag to see if he can find anything personal in there. Stiles counts the number of pieces of ham on the remaining pizza slices to take his mind off the knowledge that he’s stashed Derek’s phone and wallet wrapped in two plastic bags under the sink in the bathroom and spilled some cleaning agent around it so Derek won’t catch the scent.

Derek comes back to the bed, settling against it on the floor and reaching up to grab another slice of pizza. “Why don’t I have anything on me? An ID card, a driver’s license, anything? Why don’t I have a cell phone?”

“Maybe your stuff got stolen,” Stiles says carefully.

“It would be incredibly ambitious to try and steal from a werewolf. And what was I doing at the bar then? If I didn’t have any money?”

Stiles shrugs. “I paid for this room.” It’s the truth. Well, it is if you disregard Derek giving him the money to pay for it. It’s one of the things he’s learned about werewolves. Your answers only need to be technically true. It doesn’t work for everyone of course. Scott couldn’t lie his way out of a paper bag, because he always feels terrible about it. So while he can lie to his mother with those cute puppy dog eyes, he could never fool another wolf. Stiles, on the other hand, has always practiced economical truths with his father to a point where he even believes his own fibs sometimes. And if you believe your own words they can no longer be detected as lies.

“How generous of you,” Derek says mockingly, then a little more soberly, “What am I supposed to do now?”

“We could keep on trying to catch Larry. If he cast the spell then he may be able to lift it. Or maybe your memory will come back with time. If not, we can look into it. I’ll help you if you want.”

“Sounds good. If I don’t get my memory back, I wouldn’t know where to start anyway. And I have to give people time to miss me. I mean there must be someone who’ll notice that I’m gone. I must have friends somewhere. Pack. Family.”

Stiles tries not to wince. This went from a little bit of fun to something else altogether a lot faster than anticipated. _Derek will kill you when he finds out. You’re going to destroy everything you’ve built. And you can’t build anything on lies._ But... what if Derek never remembers? This isn’t a medical condition, this is a spell or a hex. There may not be a cure for that. It may never wear off. How cruel would it be to tell Derek all about his past? That his family is dead? How they died? He’s smiling right now. Derek’s smiled more in the past two hours than he usually does in a day, sometimes a week when shit goes down. How could Stiles ever take that away from him again?

 

 

 

There’s only one bed, a rather small double, and there’s a reason for that.

They’ve been kind of dating for a week now, not talking about it to anyone not even between themselves because neither of them wants to jinx it by making it official. Since they’re so far from home there’s nobody around who knows them and that gives them time to get used to the idea before they expose themselves to other people’s judgments. Stiles hasn’t even told anyone he’s bisexual yet because it was never an issue before and why on earth he should be expected to announce whom he’d theoretically consider boning is beyond him. There were a couple of guys he fancied at college but they were all straight or at least identified as such, so it was redundant. It wasn’t as if he was madly in love with them.

Stiles came home from college with two goals. The first was to take six months off until his course at the FBI starts in late fall and the second was to see if that weird thing between him and Derek, that had gone from antagonism past tolerance to respect and a subdued friendship over the years, could lead anywhere else. Because however much he’d been in love with Lydia, it didn’t compare to what he felt for Derek. Luckily Derek came back to Beacon Hills just before Stiles finished college. It took two months of almost desperate, over-the-top flirting and Derek holding back, before Stiles finally leaned in one day while they were in his jeep and Derek didn’t lean away. Afterwards Stiles gave a relieved sigh because _fucking finally_ and Derek said, “So you _were_ flirting with me.”

“How could you not notice? The only way I could have been more obvious is if I’d climbed you like a tree.”

“I noticed. I just wasn’t sure if you were serious. Your pick-up lines were incredibly cheesy.”

Stiles sighed again, murmured that Derek was an idiot and kissed him with more finesse. And that was that. Until last night when a drink at a bar down the road and a sudden increased heat in their stares at each other made them aware that they were ready to take this all the way. It had led to a scramble to their motel room and an upturned duffel bag in Stiles’s haste to find his condoms and lube.

Of course, the jinx kicked in without delay. They went out to an abandoned warehouse where Derek had tracked Larry to and here they are, Derek without his memory and Stiles with a severe case of _what the fuck am I even doing?_

Sharing a bed, apparently. That’s what.

Stiles is turned away from Derek and staring at the lights playing through the drawn curtains. The _M_ in the motel sign is flickering on and off and the thin fabric is not exactly blackout material. He doesn’t pretend to be asleep because Derek would know anyway but he also doesn’t expect sleep to come to him anytime soon. He tries not to think about the night before and what they were doing in this same bed.

Derek is radiating heat at Stiles’s back he’s that close. Eventually he interrupts the silence. “So do you always put out on the first day you meet someone?”

Stiles turns around quickly to stare at him. “What?”

Derek’s grin is unmistakable in the flickering light. “Well, if we met last night at a bar and we had sex, then you obviously put out. On our first date.”

“You remember having sex with me?”

“No, Stiles, I’m a werewolf. I could smell it the moment I walked in the room.” He sounds amused. “Or did _you_ make _me_ put out to pay for letting me stay in your room overnight?”

Even though Derek is obviously joking, Stiles can feel his heartbeat spike. “Derek, I would never force or coerce...” The very idea of it is abhorrent to him. Not with all the things Derek’s been through. Of course, Derek doesn’t remember any of those things. That’s the whole point at the moment.

“Relax,” Derek says with an easy confidence that Stiles has never heard before. “I was joking. I think you’d have a hard time forcing me to do anything and I could easily survive outside.”

Stiles is still looking at him, somewhat relieved that he doesn’t have to convince Derek of his innocence but still expecting something more. When there’s just a smile, he realizes that what he’s waiting for is Derek asking him if _he_ forced _Stiles_ into anything. Because that’s who Derek is, always worried about what he’s capable of, always expecting the worst of himself. This new Derek doesn’t ask. Because he may not remember anything about himself but without the guilt he’s carrying, he still knows who he is inside and that he would never do anything like that to anybody.

“Is this weird for you? I mean I can remember what we did last night and you can’t.”

The covers lift and fall to indicate Derek’s shrug. “No different from having a drunken one-night-stand, I assume. It’s actually more important to me that it explains why you were lying to me on the way here. I could sense there was something not quite right about what you said. I understand. Must be strange telling someone who doesn’t remember you that you had sex the night before.”

“Uhm...” So Derek knew he was lying but found his own rather innocuous explanation. Stiles is almost embarrassed by this unexpected stroke of luck but takes it for what it is.

Derek smirks a bit wider. “So do you wanna show me what we did last night? Might jog my memory.”

“Are you sure?” Stiles wants to show him everything. _Oh, how he wants to._ “You may regret it when you remember.”

“Well, if I didn’t have any objections last night, I can’t see why I should have any tonight.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

The sex _doesn’t_ jog Derek’s memory but not for lack of trying. They spend the next day more or less in bed, having food delivered and sleeping on and off. At the end of it Stiles feels completely fucked out and yet he is very much aware that in all that time even when they’re doing the exact same thing they did before Derek lost his memory, there are subtle differences. It’s like sleeping with a different person and also not at all at the same time.

Old-Derek was careful with Stiles, in every way, even in bed. Granted they only slept together that one time – having fooled around a lot in the days before that – and it was great, the culmination of a long development that started when Stiles was still in high school and had been on a very slow upward trajectory ever since. Stiles knows Derek like he knows no one else, not even his father. Because he studied Derek, first as a potential enemy, then out of fascination and nobody can get as obsessed as Stiles does. He has soaked up every nuance of Derek’s behavior, can read every emotion that others miss and has grown the confidence to act on his knowledge to their mutual benefit. He’s convinced that nothing less than his fixation could have gotten them here.

New-Derek is different. In his own way he’s just as gentle with Stiles as Old-Derek was but it’s not the same. It’s not born out of fear of hurting him, physically or emotionally, or the worry that this might be just one big mistake that will sooner or later blow up in his face. New-Derek is all feathery touches, soft kisses and long tingly tongue trails because it comes naturally to him. He’s big on teasing. After they had sex for the first time, Old-Derek told him that it’s easy for a werewolf to satisfy their partners because the other person gives off physical signals, scents, increased breathing and rushing blood that make it easy to determine what feels good for them. That’s the reason so many werewolves choose werewolf partners, because why would you want to do without that?

When Stiles was younger a statement like that would have destroyed any scrap of confidence he might have. How could he possibly compete? But knowing Derek the way he does, he knows that Derek needs the emotional connection, that as long as there is love he feels complete, even completely satisfied. And Stiles has slept with several people by now – yay, for college life! – so he’s not a total novice. He’s always been aware that watching porn doesn’t exactly teach you how to have sex. Good sex contains a lot less hard pounding and a lot more lube and patience to be enjoyable. Still, it’s not that hard to make a guy come. In time he’ll learn to make it even better for Derek. His feelings for Derek are something only he can supply and that’s what counts. Everything else is just technique and experience.

On the other hand New-Derek doesn’t know him nor is he in love with him. So it’s like having sex with a guy he barely knows – a guy who’s incredibly adapt at reading his moods and preferences. But at the end of their daylong fuckfest it feels like they’ve known each other for a long time, true in Stiles’s case, not so much in Derek’s right now. And yet, Stiles feels like he’s as much in love with this version of Derek as he is with the old one. There’s something so open about him. He smiles almost all the time, laughs freely and talks more, if a little vaguely for lack of personal references. And Stiles feels loved, in a light-hearted, _this-is-all-a-breathtaking-adventure_ kind of way.

When they shower and get ready to go out for the first time in two days, he stops buttoning his shirt, watches Derek get into his jeans and says almost involuntarily, “I’m in love with you.”

Derek zips up and smirks at him. “I sincerely hope so. Otherwise I’d have to put you down as a sex maniac.”

Stiles throws a cushion at him, which misses, naturally, because _werewolf reflexes_. But when they leave the room and Stiles is locking the door, Derek molds himself against his back and whispers, “I’m in love with you, too,” in his ear. His voice is so raspy Stiles is tempted to unlock the door again and drag Derek back to bed. Instead he feels just as giddily happy when Derek takes his hand on the way to the car. That’s a new one, too, the handholding.

They have breakfast in a diner a little way down the road and Derek plays unabashedly with Stiles’s fingers while they're waiting for their food. There aren’t many people about so they remain undisturbed in their booth. Stiles pays with money Derek gave him three days ago. It was a rather large amount, meant to last for a week or two, but it will be dwindling eventually.

They’ve lost track of Larry due to their impromptu interlude – another thing Old-Derek would never have allowed – but New-Derek seems unconcerned. Somehow telling him the truth has fallen by the wayside as Stiles marvels at what Derek may have become without the blows his life dealt him before he was even out of high school. It’s a wonder to behold.

The day is spent walking around town, where Derek seems to be most interested in the bookstores. It suits Stiles very well affording him the opportunity to look through the more obscure sections. He once found a book on potions in a thrift shop that made even Deaton green with envy. Not that Stiles has much use for it since it takes special skills to make potions with actual magical properties, but he likes to collect bargaining chips for when he needs them.

Eventually, they end up in a pool hall where Derek attempts to improve Stiles’s game. Stiles knows how to play but he also vividly remembers being unceremoniously evicted from a party in freshman year of high school because he was showing off and ripped the green of the host's pool table. Still it makes for an amusing anecdote while Derek tries valiantly to improve his coordination.

“So this Scott got thrown out as well?” Derek asks as he corrects first Stiles’s stance with a tug on his hips, then his cuing by leaning over his back to show him the right angle, which is somewhat counterproductive. “How come? What did _he_ do?”

“He didn’t do anything. Scott and I have always been a package deal since we were little. Two social outcasts stuck together.” It’s weird that Derek doesn’t know this but liberating at the same time.

“You were a social outcast?” Derek sounds incredulous. “I bet people really regretted that when you turned out like this.” He’s planted his cue in front of him, holding it with both hands and looking Stiles up and down with obvious appreciation.

“You have no idea. I had this buzzcut and wore weird clothes and mostly warmed the bench at lacrosse matches and I had ADHD. Well, I still have that. But back then I was just a nerd. I just couldn’t shut up about the strangest topics. And then Scott got bitten by a werewolf and everything changed. We grew up in a hurry.” He looks at Derek, who looks horrified. “And I grew my hair.”

“He got bitten without consent?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t much fun for a long time.”

“I can imagine.” Derek shakes his head when Stiles aims for the orange ball and nods at the yellow near the middle pocket. “And you’re gorgeous. I can’t imagine it was just the hair. People must have been blind.”

Stiles aims at the yellow ball instead and pots it by rolling it in slowly. He knows his appearance has improved considerably since high school, although he thinks he’s more okay looking and makes the rest up with humor and intelligence. To hear Derek call him gorgeous makes him blush when it filters through with a small delay - and miss his next shot.

Afterwards they have a late lunch in a different diner and return to the hotel to nap for a couple of hours. Stiles was expecting it to be a euphemism for more sex but is surprised to end up actually sleeping after about half an hour of lying in Derek’s arms just touching each other. It’s not even remotely sexual, just comfortable and relaxing.

In the evening Derek takes them back to the pool hall but surprises Stiles by asking him to stay at the bar. The hall is full now, noisy and smoky, and Stiles orders a beer, wondering if he should get one for Derek as well, but when he turns around, Derek is out of talking range already, moving further into the room.

Normally, Stiles isn’t one to sit quietly in the corner but he’s a little confused, so he just watches for now. Derek prowls around the tables, observing some of the games, then wandering to the next table until he starts talking to someone in the center of the room. After another couple of games the guy hands Derek a cue. Stiles resists the urge to get closer, watching instead as Derek puts a little money on the table which he promptly loses. His movements are a little strange, not as sleek as they should be and he seems to talk a lot.

After the third game, Stiles gets distracted by a call on his cellphone. It’s Scott. Reluctantly he walks outside so he can hear better. He’d much rather not talk to anyone back home but he knows he’ll only arouse suspicion if he avoids all contact. He should really call his dad as well.

Talking to Scott has always been easy. Stiles has no idea if werewolves can detect lies over the phone but Scott won’t be looking for any, so he won’t notice in any case. Still, Stiles struggles at times to keep a normal conversation going. Nothing he tells Scott is an outright lie. They’ve lost Larry's trace for now and aren't looking very hard. All it takes is to hint that he and Derek are otherwise occupied – and then having to spell it out because Scott’s never been one to pick up on subtlety.

 _“Oh,”_ he says.

“Yeah,” Stiles answers.

_“How long has that been going on?”_

“It started last Monday but being on the road together has led to further developments if you know what I mean.”

 _“Oh,”_ Scott says again. _“Congratulations?”_

Stiles has to laugh at how out of his depth Scott is. “Thanks, man. I think. Listen we’re just out at the moment, so maybe I’ll talk to you later?”

_“Sure. Say hello to Derek for me.”_

“Will do,” Stiles says before ending the call. That should give him a few days grace before he needs to contact Scott again to stop him from worrying. For once, it’s an advantage that Derek and Scott aren’t great friends so Scott won’t insist on speaking to him personally.

Stiles looks at the pool hall, decides that Derek doesn’t need him for whatever he’s doing in there and calls his dad to get that conversation out of the way as well while Derek can’t listen in. It’s nowhere near as smooth sailing as the one before. His father isn’t easily fooled. He asks many questions about where they are exactly, how the hunt for Larry is going, what they’re doing to find the trace again and when they’re coming back. It’s obvious that his dad’s picked up on Stiles’s overly cautious answers. Eventually Stiles manages to assure him that everything is fine, that he and Derek are not in any danger, that they’re getting on fine with each other, and: _really, Dad, I’m fine_. He has to promise to call him again in two days time before he can end the call.

That didn’t go so well, mostly because all the way through the conversation Stiles had the urge to tell his father that Derek’s lost his memory and that Stiles can’t bring himself to tell him who he is. His father is the one person he’d trust to sort this mess out for him, to give him some advice that will somehow make this all okay again, but he knows that he’s made this decision and he will have to be the one to fix it. When he’s just about to go back inside, Derek comes out, closely followed by two guys, who don’t seem happy at all.

“Hey, wait,” one of them shouts. He’s an inch or two shorter than Derek but wiry looking. “You were hustling us.”

Derek turns around and smiles. “Only because you were hustling the other guy before me. I’m just better at it.”

“Very funny. I want my money back.”

Stiles pockets his phone and digs out the keys for his jeep. It looks like a quick getaway may be in order.

“Yeah, not gonna happen,” Derek says amiably. “Don’t be a sore loser. Go back in and hustle someone else. I promise I won’t be back to step on your territory again.”

“I want my money.”

The second guy has stepped to the side to turn them into two smaller targets and he’s a lot more impressive than the hustler guy, a foot taller at least and heavily built. Not that anything about them worries Stiles. They’re no threat, not really, but he would like to avoid unnecessary brawling.

Derek stops smiling now and Stiles can feel the atmosphere changing. Even humans can’t help but feel the menace that werewolves give off when they’re riled up. The other two exchange an uneasy glance and Stiles takes that as his cue to walk over to the jeep and start it up. He stops right next to Derek, who’s still in a silent stand-off with his opponents but neither one of them seems in the mood to be the first to attack. Derek salutes them mockingly and gets in the car.

“Did you just pool hustle those two guys?”

“I needed some money. I can’t live off yours until I get my memory back. This was easy. Pool is mainly hand-eye coordination and the rest is just calculating angles. Anyway they were bad guys. The little guy was hustling anyway. It’s always the most fun to cheat the cheaters. Anyway I warned them I was really good at pool.”

“Yeah and then I bet you behaved like an idiot for the first few games.”

Derek shrugs and grins. “That’s how it’s done.”

Who’d have thought that Derek would be so resourceful when he has to fall back to his own devices? Then again, he and Laura somehow survived when they were left with nothing and on the run from hunters. “So how much did you make?”

Derek pulls a bunch of crammed notes out of his jeans pocket. “About two-fifty, I think.”

“You made 250 bucks in just over an hour? You’re beginning to scare me.”

Stashing the money carelessly in the glove compartment, Derek puts his hand on Stiles’s thigh and gives it a gentle stroke, soft, affectionate. “Well, I have to keep you in style, don’t I, baby?”

Stiles nearly chokes on his own spit.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

They move gradually across the country, slowly gaining on Larry but never catching up. Neither of them has much interest in doing that. Larry seems to favor small towns, just big enough to blend in but not so large that they have any really efficient law enforcement that might cause him any problems. While he does cause bloodshed once or twice, his preferred MO is creating havoc, mostly of the embarrassing kind or forcing people to behave in ways that either cause brawls or are probably the beginning of nasty lifelong feuds. He likes mischief and thrives on other people’s misfortunes, either figuratively or maybe even literally in that he feeds off negative emotions. They still haven’t quite worked it out.

For Stiles and Derek it means staying in small hotels, eating good, healthy food in old-fashioned diners and having all the time in the world for what feels like the first time in forever. Stiles has never been so carefree before. The clearly memorable parts of his childhood consist mainly of grief, trying to fit in with rather limited success and worry about disappointing his dad - or worrying about his dad, period. And even though he knows next to nothing about Derek's childhood, he can say with absolute certainty that Derek hasn’t been this untroubled since before the fire, before Paige.

They sleep late, do some research, have long meals or spend hours in quaint little coffee shops just enjoying each other’s company. In between they take detours to go sight-seeing, skinny-dipping in deserted lakes and sun bathing. They watch sunsets and sunrises together, sometimes both in the same night and just drive. There are lots of lazy conversations and plenty of equally lazy sex. And on the last night before they leave any town they’re staying in, Derek usually finds a way to make money, mostly playing pool, sometimes shooting hoops, even darts on one occasion. There’s nothing Derek doesn’t excel at.

To his own surprise Stiles never slips up. He’s very careful when he talks about his past or home and as time passes, it gets easier. By then Derek knows that it’s just Stiles and his dad, knows the names of Stiles’s friends, even if he thinks he’s never met any of them. Every couple of days Stiles checks Derek’s phone, but there are no messages or missed calls. It makes him sad and relieved at the same time. It’s strange to think that the same guy who converses so easily with waitresses, shop assistants and can charm people enough to hustle them out of money led such a solitary life before. His call history shows mostly calls and messages from Stiles himself. When Stiles talks to anyone from Beacon Hills, he tells them that Derek’s fine but they never say more than to say hello to him to which Stiles always replies with, _I will_ , and never does for obvious reasons. Nobody seems to find it surprising or odd that he’s the only one keeping in touch with them, as if Derek’s just an afterthought.

One night as he finishes his shower he hears his phone go off in the bedroom and rushes in there barely taking the time to wrap a towel around his hips. Derek has picked up Stiles’s phone off the dresser and turns around when he hears him approach. They both know it’s Scott because Derek knows all his ringtones by now. There’s a moment when Stiles makes a hasty grab for the phone and even though Derek releases it willingly enough something in his demeanor makes Stiles go, _oh fuck!,_ in his head. While he answers, he watches Derek pick up the ice bucket and leave the room to refill it.

Derek always gives him space to talk to people back home and has done so from the beginning. Apparently it’s considered bad manners among werewolves to remain in hearing range of private conversations. Stiles never knew that before. With his usual upbeat manner Scott catches him up on what everyone they know is doing but Stiles is only half listening, his phone tucked between his ear and shoulder while getting into his underwear and jeans. In his mind he can still see Derek’s expression, looking like Stiles slapped him in the face.

 _“Are you okay, dude?”_ Scott asks after a while. _“You sound strange. Is everything alright? Derek okay? You_ and _Derek okay?”_

“Yeah, we’re peachy. Blissfully happy actual.”

_“Really? So is this like a honeymoon for you guys?”_

“Something like that. I spare you the details. But I gotta go, Scott, really.”

He’s out the door while he’s still asking to convey the usual greetings to everyone and saying his goodbyes. Derek isn’t hard to spot. He’s sitting on the plastic bench next to the vending machine, the ice bucket between his feet and his elbows on his knees. Stiles pockets his phone before he takes a seat next to him. It’s late evening, the day just turning to dusk and the air is still warm. For a while neither one of them says anything, both trying to ignore the screaming argument the couple in Number 17 across the parking lot is having. Something about the guy spending all their money on the horses.

“I didn’t think you were snooping or anything,” Stiles says finally.

Derek isn’t looking at him. “Maybe you didn’t but you also don’t want me to touch your stuff. And you’re keeping me well away from anyone who knows you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Really, Stiles?” When Derek turns to him there’s so much hurt in his eyes that Stiles would do anything to make it go away. “You come charging out of the bathroom like a bat out of hell when your phone rings. What am I supposed to think? Other than that you’re hiding something from me? Or are you maybe hiding _me_ from someone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve never spoken to this Scott. You say you’re friends, best friends. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe I’m just your bit on the side that the boyfriend at home doesn’t know about.”

Stiles snorts derisively, he can’t help it. “ _Scott?_ Really not. And can we all say, _yuck?_ We’re like brothers, have been all our lives. I’m pretty sure it would be incestuous by this stage.”

“So there’s no one back home waiting for you?”

Stiles scoots a little closer, so he can take Derek’s hand while their bare arms are touching, making him shiver. “Listen to me. Listen to my heartbeat. There's no one at home or anywhere else. You’re the only one for me. The only one I’m with and the only one I want to be with. Okay?”

Derek interlaces their fingers and smiles gently, his features relaxing slowly. “Good, because I feel the same way about you.”

And Stiles realizes how much he loves Derek, truly and deeply, and in any incarnation. There's something about who Derek is at the core that makes it irrelevant whether he’s a broody laconic asshole or the light-hearted ray of sunshine he is nowadays. Derek is Derek and Stiles will love him no matter what, and, _Oh fuck, this is so messed up._

 

 

 

They spend two days in Las Vegas just because it’s there. The first day they go looking at the sights until deep into the night. Stiles has never seen so many lights. Everything is loud and shrill and exhilarating at the same time. Walking among the crowds of people with Derek by his side is like a dream. Being with Derek enhances every experience tenfold.

During the second night, Stiles spends an enjoyable two hours losing fifty dollars on the slot machines. He didn’t expect anything else. Derek, on the other hand, rented a tuxedo in the afternoon and has joined a poker game. It also comes as no surprise to Stiles that Derek has won a five figure sum when he comes to collect him at the bar and has been politely asked to leave by the management.

On the way to their hotel they end up on a deserted playground, where they lie on their backs on one of those carousel discs that spin deceptively fast, with their legs dangling over opposite sides. Derek keeps giving them a little push from time to time, not too fast though because Stiles had a little too much to drink.

There’s a sliver of the moon out and away from the bigger roads with their illuminations they can even see one or two stars twinkling. Their heads are next to each other with their cheeks almost touching. Stiles is intoxicated with alcohol and life in general and being with Derek in particular. When he thinks about how much money they have right now he realizes that they could do this forever. There’s no stopping them. Nothing they’re doing is illegal, not really. They could also get jobs when they want to stay somewhere. Or they could travel for years, all over the country and even abroad and have a great life together.

“Just think,” Derek says with some amusement. “If I had papers, we could get married in one of those weird churches.”

 _Oh, right. There’s that_. Derek doesn’t have any papers. So they _couldn’t_ go abroad. Nor could Stiles ever go home because how would he explain to Derek that he can’t come along? “Yeah,” he says simply.

There’s a long pause where Stiles is trying to keep his buzz going, before Derek says, “What if I’m already married?”

It’s like Stiles had a bucket of water poured over him, waking him from a pleasant dream. _This is crazy. It will never work. You’ve gotta own up. You just have to_. His father is already asking him what’s taking them so long and hinting heavily that he was hoping to spend some time with his son before he starts with the FBI. But Derek is so relaxed and happy right now. Stiles wants him to stay that way. He doesn’t want him to have to be sad and full of guilt anymore. Derek deserves better than what life dished out for him.

“These last few weeks have been like dream,” Derek carries on quietly. “I don’t really want to wake up. I couldn’t possibly have been any happier in my previous life than I am now. Chances are it was a lot less happy and why would I even want to go back to that? But this isn’t real, is it? It’s like a vacation or something. At some point we need to stop and face real life. I think that point's now. I need to find Larry. I need to know who I am. So I can start a real life again. With you.”

“You may not want me after you get your memories back.”

Derek turns his head a little and kisses Stiles’s cheek. “Don’t worry. I can’t imagine I’ve ever loved anyone as much as you. If there’s someone else, if there are other obligations, they’ll all somehow have to learn to live with you.”

“What if you don’t remember our time together? What if you go right back to when you lost your memories?”

Derek puts up his elbow to support his head while he looks down at Stiles somberly. “It was love at first sight, so I’m confident it would happen again.”

Stiles sniffs a little, veering between a sense of foreboding and the sudden hope that if Derek's memory gets reset to the time when he lost it, he may never have to own up. He could pretend that he always told him the truth. Then Derek may not end up despising him but neither would he remember this incredible time of being together. “I love you so much I can hardly breathe when I’m around you or even just think of you.”

Derek smiles. “Same here.” 

Stiles closes his eyes. “I’ll help you find Larry. And if he can’t give you your memories back, I know a man in Beacon Hills, who might be able to help.” He dreads the very thought of having to explain what he did, but it’s too late now to change it. Up to this point Derek has shown no urgency to get his memories back. It was always a vague plan for the future, secondary to what they were doing. Now that he’s changed his mind Stiles will do whatever he can to make that happen for him. He owes him that much.

 

 

 

Over the years Stiles has built an online information network. It’s small, just a few selected contacts so that hunters can’t infiltrate and use the information, and everything is on a barter system where favors are granted and repaid. His favorite group calls themselves _The Coven_. They tolerate more than accept him but he has access to a bestiary and also cloned Peter’s laptop a long time ago. His information is always good. He could probably make a lot of money if he was willing to sell his expertise but he prefers to share it with his online connections for a greater good.

The morning after their talk in the playground, Stiles awakes with a headache, like he always does when he’s had too much to drink. Somehow it never stops him from doing it again though. He opens his laptop and enters the chat room the _Coven_ has set up especially for him before he goes into the shower. It’s not until the afternoon that one of the other members, BlueGoddess from Scotland, tunes in after she returns home from work. The group consists mainly of women, some of whom he suspects of being pretty powerful magic users. Most treat him like a younger sibling, with varying degrees of affection and condescension, but a lot of them owe him small or even large favors. BlueGoddess is one of them because he gave her good advice on how to deal with a kanima when everyone else was stumped. After Jackson Stiles has been kind of an expert on the subject.

They exchange greetings and get down to business pretty quickly. Derek returns halfway through with some lunch, which Stiles practically inhales as he missed breakfast due to his hangover. He’s already described Larry’s behavior in great detail. His appearance seems to consist of various innocuous disguises and BlueGoddess thinks it’s probably a glamour. Stiles has surmised as much already. Her next suggestion is that they’re dealing with a spirit trickster, some kind of lesser demon. Stiles shivers at the mere memory of the last demon he encountered, and got to know rather intimately.

PackGuru: How do I track him?

BlueGoddess: Wouldn’t advise it!! Stay clear, hen!!!

PackGuru: He left a memory loss hex/spell/curse. My friend would v much like 2 remember who he is.

BlueGoddess: How unfortunate. You can’t force a trickster to do your bidding. You have nothing he wants.

PackGuru: Have 2 try. How do I track him?

BlueGoddess: His trail should be pretty obvious by the havoc he creates. It’s impossible to predict where he’ll turn up next and he can disappear at will. Why not just summon him?

PackGuru: How?

There’s a long pause, followed by a string of text over two pages.

BlueGoddess: Get the ingredients. Mix the potions. Recite the spell. But please pleeeeaaaase be careful!!! He will be corporeal and very!! pissed off!!! Even if he does what you want, he may hold a grudge. And he has a very long memory!!

PackGuru: Still have to try.

BlueGoddess: Use the second spell to banish him. Be careful, Gru!! If you let him go, he'll come after you! I don’t want to be responsible if anything happens to you!!!! 

PackGuru: Thanks, Blue. We’re even. I’ll let u know how I got on.

BlueGoddess: Please do asap.

Stiles logs out and looks over the list of ingredients. Most of it is easy to obtain. Others will take a bit more ingenuity.

“Why did she call you Gru?” Derek asks still reading over his shoulder through the instructions.

“Not sure. They all do it. I suspect it’s an Angel reference.”

“Angels?”

“Not the celestial kind. The TV show. Someone misspelled my username once and it stuck.”

“I loved Angel.”

Stiles snorts. “Yeah, you would.” Then he realizes that he’s thinking of Old-Derek, who had the same demeanor as the vampire, right down to a similar dress sense. Derek would rock Angel’s coat. “Probably more your generation than mine,” he says to cover his faux-pas. It earns him a prolonged tickling that segues into an even longer make-out session. Derek’s age is a running joke between them, with Stiles often referring to it as if he thinks Derek could be much older than he is and Derek reacting with mock outrage every time.

It’s only later that they talk about the fact that Derek clearly remembers TV shows, movies and books but not the circumstances of watching or reading them. It’s an oddity similar to the fact that he can control his shift on the full moon but cannot recall who taught him. Whatever his anchor was over the last few years – Stiles can’t be sure Derek still used anger or had moved on to something a little healthier while they were apart – now he openly uses Stiles. It’s almost like a love declaration in itself.

It takes them a few days to gather all the ingredients. Most can be found with the herbalists in the city but one or two need to be hunted down in more obscure shops. Then they take long drives to scout out a suitable building, one that's remote enough to let them go undisturbed and also abandoned because Derek doesn’t want to cause the owner any trouble.

“This is the reason the bad guys always win,” Stiles snarks. “Because the good guys have too many scruples.”

It’s their second day of scouting the building to make doubly sure that it fits their requirements. They’ve booked into a nearby motel and Stiles is getting antsy. This may be the last day he’s spending with Derek. He’s pretty sure Derek won’t forgive him for lying to him this whole time. No amount of fast talking will get him out of this hole he’s dug for himself. He knows this and the stress is killing him. Luckily he can pretend his anxiety is down to the prospect of summoning a hostile, supernatural being.

“And what I mean by good guys,” he continues when Derek just smiles, “is you. You’re the good guy, Derek. Never forget that.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

Stiles’s heart is ready to burst with emotion. His love for Derek has deepened over the last few weeks as Derek has proven himself to be an extraordinary person, kind, gentle, loving and even funny. And that’s just the blossoming of the person he already was under all the guilt and grief. Removed from his traumatic past he could be who he is deep inside without fear or remorse.

“You have no idea who I am,” Stiles says.

Derek chuckles. “Don’t you have that backwards? We know who _you_ are. It’s _me_ we’re not sure about. Don’t worry so much. Getting my memories back won’t change anything between us.”

Stiles wants to tell him the truth if only because he thinks he stands more of a chance that Derek will forgive him if he confesses rather than be found out. Maybe Derek’s love for him will be strong enough for that right now when all he remembers is their time spent together. But in the end he can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t get the words out no matter how much he tries. He’s always expecting people to leave him behind. He knows Derek will, so he wants to savor every last moment he has left with him. It’s selfish. Everything he’s done since Derek hit his head has been selfish. He can never change that now.

“It’ll change everything,” he mutters.

“Come here.” Derek pulls him closer until Stiles is practically in his lap in the passenger seat and kisses him. Nothing else, just kisses and his arms around him. Stiles has to fight down the urge to cry.

 

 

 

The spell is rather complicated. It involves drawing a pentagram with some mixed herbs, fortified wine and rice of all things mixed together, painting symbols inside and around it with different potions they had to blend and then speaking several paragraphs of ritual words. Stiles has learned them – and most importantly the banishment spell – by heart. He doesn’t want to risk losing the paper they’re written on. Who knows what tricks Larry has in store? Stiles isn’t taking any chances.

In the end it’s pretty easy. They make all the preparations at dusk, then start the summoning when it’s dark so that there’s less chance of someone passing this old barn in the middle of nowhere. Derek's unusually cautious, checking everything inside and outside several times and arming himself with some potion ‘bombs’ just in case. He seems to finally have developed the sense of self-preservation Stiles has begged him for so many times in the past.

Stiles casts the actual spell so that Derek can use his senses to watch for any dangers. Larry appears as soon as Stiles utters the last word. He looks the same as he looked last time they saw him, a nondescript middle-aged man, wearing a cardigan and glasses, giving him the appearance of a librarian or a scholar. He looks around at the symbols that are confining him and snarls viciously.

“What do you want?” Larry studies Derek for a few moments then turns to Stiles. “How did you summon me? You’re not a wizard. Not even a druid.”

“Friends in high places.” Stiles smiles pleasantly. “If you would be so kind to restore my friend’s memory, we can all be on our way.”

“Really?” Larry mocks and scrutinizes Derek a while longer. “I can’t. He’s a werewolf. His powers would work against anything I can do. I’m surprised he hasn’t recovered on his own. It’s not meant to be permanent. It’s just a bit of fun.”

“Fun?” Stiles feels his anger rise. One man's fun is another man's life-changing event with the potential to fuck said life up irreparably.

“Well, yeah. I take your memories, you walk around disoriented for a while and I’ll be long gone when you remember me. Most people would give up after that.”

“I don’t care. Restore his memories!”

“I told you I can’t. I don’t know how.”

Stiles exchanges a look with Derek, who shrugs resignedly in return. If Larry is lying then he can fool werewolves. “Well, in that case we have no use for you. So it’s time to go back home.”

“Oh com’on! I’m not doing any harm. I’m just having a bit of fun.”

“Your idea of fun and ours are very different. Restore my friend’s memory and we’ll let you go.” Stiles has no intention to do that because some of the ‘harmless fun’ has led to injuries and death. And BlueGoddess was very clear in her warnings.

“I’m telling you, I can’t!” Larry launches himself against the invisible walls but practically bounces off them. Then he appears to be trying to throw incantations at them with the same result, making him pretty irate with spells coming hard and fast now, sizzling louder and brighter each time. There’s a strange disconnect between Larry’s unassuming appearance and the rage and power he’s displaying. The atmosphere in the barn smells keenly of ozone and sulfur.

Stiles is very impressed with the Coven’s spell. Watching Larry get angrier he starts the banishment incantation – slowly, to give Larry time to change his mind. But despite becoming increasingly frantic and vocal Larry insists that he can’t help them. Stiles doesn’t know how to feel when he disappears as suddenly as he arrived. It’s a little anti-climactic when there’s not even a puff of smoke. Larry is there one moment and gone the next, back to his own world, if the incantation did what it’s supposed to do.

Derek kicks at the circle and the runes until they’re scattered everywhere with no chance of being re-used by anyone, accidentally or otherwise. “What now?”

“Now we’re going to Beacon Hills and see if Deaton can help.”

Derek nods his assent, then smiles. “Let’s take a detour on the way. I’d like to spend a little more time in blissful ignorance with you. Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?”

Stiles grins. “Nope. The Grand Canyon it is.”

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

A week later Stiles finds himself in yet another nondescript motel room waiting for Derek to get their food. They’re on the verge of crossing back into California and time is running short. Just over two months have passed since Derek lost his memory and it’s been heaven and hell. They’ve been so amazingly good together and at the same time Stiles has only been too aware that they’re living on borrowed time. Even if Deaton can’t lift the spell, Stiles will have to tell Derek the truth. But he wants to wait until the last moment because Derek will hate him afterwards and with good reason.

Still, Stiles can’t bring himself to regret his choice entirely. For two months Derek has experienced a life that should have been his in the first place, being carefree enough to love and live life to the fullest extent. It was stolen from him by Kate and Peter and everyone else who mistreated him. Just this once he was allowed to be free of that old life that was weighing him down. How can Stiles not think of that as a gift, no matter the consequences?

He closes his laptop when Derek opens the motel room door. “What took you so long? Did you hunt down the cow yourself?” Even in an unfamiliar town buying burger and fries shouldn’t take an hour and a half. Stiles’s grin dies when he sees Derek’s face strangely devoid of his habitual broad smile. There’s also no food in his hands. “What happened?”

His first thought is that Derek somehow miraculously remembered everything. _Oh shit! You’ve waited too long. Now you’ve lost your chance to break it to him gently. You’re such a fuckwit._ But Derek shows none of the anger that used to rise so easily to the surface. This is New-Derek being furious, something Stiles hasn’t seen before and it’s somehow worse for being so unexpected – and so very cold.

“Look what I found,” Derek says with an icy stare and lips pressed together in a thin line.

Stiles braces himself for a fight. It’s not as if he hasn’t played this out in his head a million times already. Whatever Derek may have found out about himself, they can talk it out. If Derek hasn’t regained his memory there’s still a chance to salvage this. As long Stiles doesn’t panic. But the next moment a second person steps into the room, making Stiles hastily scramble off the bed. This he’d rather not face sitting down. “Cora!”

Derek’s face falls a few more degrees as if he’s been hoping against hope that Stiles wouldn’t know his sister. “So she was telling the truth. You _do_ know who she is. Who _I_ am.”

Cora gives off the same vibes she did when Stiles first met her: seething with suppressed rage, the old Hale family trait. Nevertheless Stiles only has eyes for Derek, who looks utterly dejected.

“You’ve been lying to me this whole time?”

“Not so much lying. More like… omitting the truth?” Stiles pulls a facetious expression which falls utterly flat on his audience.

“Why would you do that?”

“I...” No matter how many times Stiles has practiced his defense in his head, anything he could possibly say seems completely inadequate now. How can he ever explain something he doesn’t quite understand himself? It just happened. “I wanted... I wanted you to be free. Just for a little while.”

“From _what_?” Cora snarls. “His _family_? His _pack_?”

“His memory.” It sounds so ludicrous. “I’m sorry. I just...”

Cora snorts scornfully, and dismisses Stiles as if he’s not worth their time. “Com’on, Derek.” She grabs Derek’s bag, which is still packed as they’ve only just checked in. “Let’s go home.”

Her brother doesn’t move. He’s still staring at Stiles. “Was it fun? Pretending?”

 _No, no, no, no, no, no! A world of no!_ Stiles cannot allow Derek to think that Stiles wasn’t sincere in his feelings. “I wasn’t pretending, Derek. I swear. I meant everything… every word... every... it was real, all of it.”

Cora looks between them, her face suddenly showing dawning comprehension, and advances on Stiles with murder in her eyes. “You did all this so you could get _laid_? You bastard! I’m gonna rip you to shreds. You did this so you two could bang? Because you know full well that Derek would never look at you twice under normal circumstances. You knew he was out of your league and you took advantage of him. You’re disgusting! Absolutely vile!”

Derek is holding her back in an instinctive gesture while Stiles is forced to shrink further away from them when all he wants to do is touch Derek, to make him feel their connection, to somehow make him understand. But he knows better than to confront an irate werewolf. “It wasn’t like that! Please, Derek! You have to believe me! We were already together before you lost your memory. I would never do that to you!”

Derek's voice is glacial. “And yet you did.” He gives his sister a little push toward the door which she reluctantly takes, still glaring at Stiles. Then he walks out of the room, herding Cora in front of him and leaving the door open to the darkening evening. A little later Stiles hears a car engine start with the familiar rumble of the Camaro. He stumbles the two steps to the bed and rolls himself into a ball on top of the cover. The door remains open until he comes back to himself an hour later, shivering despite the warm night air and feeling too numb to even cry.

 

 

 

Two days later Stiles arrives back in Beacon Hills, not really remembering much of his journey beyond the emptiness of his jeep that can somehow not be combated with even the loudest music. He has a dozen or so missed calls from his dad and Scott and even a rare one from Lydia – but none from Derek. He didn’t really expect any and he doesn’t feel much like talking to anyone else.

His heart sinks when he sees his father’s cruiser in the driveway. He was hoping to have the house to himself for a bit because he hasn’t slept much since Derek left, but when his dad comes toward him in the hallway that smells so much like home and safety, Stiles wraps his arms around him and holds on tight like a drowning man. The sheriff hugs him silently, patting his back, and Stiles just bursts into tears.

“I fucked up, Dad… _so_ , _so much_. And now he hates me and… I’m sorry. Everybody’s gonna hate me.”

“It’s okay, Son. We’ll fix it, whatever it is. And I could never hate you. Come and sit down.”

They talk. For half an hour Stiles just pours out what happened and why he did what he did. He leaves out some of the more intimate details but his father is astute enough to realize what kind of relationship Stiles and Derek were having. There’s not much of a reaction. He probably already knew or strongly suspected and it’s obviously a non-issue for him, but he does clear up the mystery of how Cora managed to find them.

“She came to me and asked me if I knew where Derek was. She came all the way from South America because she was worried. Derek didn’t answer his emails for weeks, so she came looking for him. I told her where you were and I almost went with her but you said on the phone that you’re alright and I pride myself that I’d be able to tell if you were lying about that. So I thought it was a sibling issue and left them to it. But then I saw Derek and Cora yesterday. I asked where you were and what happened and Cora just said I’d have to ask you that. Come to think of it, Derek just stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.”

“As far as he’s concerned he hasn’t. God, this is so messed up. Do you know where they are now?”

The sheriff shakes his head. “But Scott’s called a few times to ask if I’d heard from you.”

Stiles buries his head in his elbow on the table and groans. How is he going to explain this to his best friend? He can barely explain it to himself. Everybody’s going to know and that’s not even the worst of it. The absolute worst is that Derek hates him now. Stiles didn’t know that he could hurt this much.

“I think I’m gonna lie down on the couch for a bit,” he says.

His father nods and when Stiles has settled himself in the living room with a blanket, he brings him a sandwich and a soda.

“Thanks, Dad.” Stiles is so grateful to still have his dad that his eyes start to sting with tears again. Whatever may happen in his life, it’s always good to be home. It only takes twenty minutes of watching the Discovery Channel until Stiles falls asleep.

 

 

 

It’s still early the next morning when his father wakes him to say he’s going to work and will call in during his lunch break.

“You don’t need to, Dad.” Stiles is determined to sleep the day away. What else is there to do anyway? “I’ll be fine. I’m just gonna rest.”

“Doubtful, Son. Scott’s here.”

The sheriff puts a mug of steaming coffee on Stiles’s night table, lightly raps his knuckles on the wood as a goodbye and leaves the room. Stiles can hear him exchange a few words with Scott downstairs and then the front door closing. A few moments later Scott bursts into the room but stops when he sees Stiles is still in bed.

“Dude, what happened? First you and Derek go off on some sort of quest or elopement or whatever, and then all hell breaks loose. I can tell you now, Cora is _pissed_. She’s ready to murder anyone who just mentions your name. What did you do? Is it your fault Derek lost his memory?”

Stiles snorts. “No, Derek managed to do that completely on his own. Because he never listens and never stops to think!” He shifts up in the bed to sit against the headboard, and picks up his coffee. “Did you see him? Does he have his memory back?”

Scott settles at the foot of the bed. “Nah, Deaton tried a spell yesterday. That didn’t work. Now he wants to brew some sort of concoction. But that’ll take a couple of days. So, what happened?”

“How’s Derek?”

There’s a shrug. “Weird. He’s almost completely silent but not the way he used to be. Remember when he was always either angry or just trying to intimidate us by staring at us without a word? Yeah, it’s nothing like that. He’s just quiet. And he looks like… I don’t know, man, just confused or something. Cora keeps talking for him and he just lets her, like it’s got nothing to do with him.”

“Where is he?”

“Not sure. I think they’re staying at the loft. Are you going to tell me what happened or what?”

Reluctantly Stiles tells him the whole story, in much more detail than he divulged to his dad because Scott keeps interrupting with questions and Stiles is rested now. Scott’s reaction is pretty much the same though, full of promises that this will be fixed somehow. Scott’s never lost his belief that there are no problems without solutions.

“So you didn’t tell Derek that you know him? All this time? No wonder Cora’s so mad.”

“Did they not tell you?”

“No, Derek just said he lost his memory and Cora flies off the handle every time your name gets mentioned. But nobody’s really explaining anything.”

That’s a welcome surprise. Stiles is pretty convinced this unexpected restraint wasn’t Cora’s idea. He shrugs, more to himself than Scott. “I want to help him. But it won’t change anything. If he gets his memory back, he still won’t want anything to do with me.”

“Yeah, maybe. But you don’t know that until it happens. Deaton wants you to come over so he can talk to you about the spell.”

“Okay.” At least it’s an incentive to get out of bed and face the day.

 

 

 

When they arrive at the surgery, Deaton is treating a Jack Russell with a sore gum and Stiles is vaguely annoyed that he isn’t focusing all his energy on helping Derek. It doesn’t take him long to realize the hypocrisy of that sentiment and he idly fiddles with the leaflets on the counter until the vet’s finished in the back. Stiles doesn’t need to watch him perform canine dentistry, thank you very much. Scott, on the other hand, rushes in to help because he’s Scott and that’s what he does even on his day off.

Eventually all three of them end up in Deaton’s office that doubles – triples? – as the apothecary and the coffee room. Stiles drinks yet another cup on top of the one his dad made him and the one they got in the coffee shop on the way over and it’s finally starting to have the desired effect. He feels much calmer now. Since he’s stopped taking his Adderall in college he self-medicates almost exclusively with coffee.

He tells them everything he knows about Larry, every detail, even the ones that seem insignificant. There’s not much to say about the actual spell that hit Derek because it was more of a booby trap they ran into, so Stiles didn’t see it being cast. Deaton isn’t happy that they banished the demon. Apparently it’s much easier to reverse a spell if you can get hold of some of the caster’s bodily fluids or even body parts. Stiles doubts very much that they would have been able to obtain either. Larry would have had something to say about that and he was pretty powerful. Stiles reckons they were lucky they managed to get rid of him at all.

Deaton does a lot of scratching the little soul patch on his chin and not saying very much. Business as usual then. Stiles occupies his hands with folding origami animals out of the half dozen or so leaflets he brought in here with him. He’s fairly bored until the door opens and Cora and Derek walk in. He can almost feel the loathing emanating from Cora but he has no trouble ignoring her because his eyes are glued to Derek.

“What’s _he_ doing here?” Cora hisses and doesn’t need to specify whom she’s talking about.

“Trying to help.” Deaton sounds like he’s had just about enough of her.

“Well, that would be a new one.”

Derek’s moving silently over to the window where he leans against the sill and crosses his arms. It’s impossible to see his features with the sunlight streaming in all around him but he looks gorgeous just the same. Stiles knows every line of his body intimately by now and he’s aching to touch. The last few days without Derek have been torture. Knowing that he only has himself to blame doesn’t make it the slightest bit easier. He can’t see his eyes properly, so he doesn’t know if Derek is glaring at him or eye-fucking him or maybe not looking at him at all.

“So have you made any progress?” Cora demands.

“Not much. It’s no use coming here every day. I'll let you know when I have news.”

Cora nods and walks to the door where she waits in an obvious invitation for Derek to leave with her. It takes a few moments for her brother to follow. To do that he has to walk past Stiles and to Stiles’s surprise Derek is looking right at him although without any discernible expression. Having anticipated being completely ignored, Stiles is at a loss what to do with this unexpected development. A smile would probably be rejected so he makes the only gesture he can think of to establish some kind of connection: he holds out the origami figure he finished just before the Hales walked in. It’s a howling wolf, one of only three shapes he can produce, the others being a dragon and a Pegasus. Origami is more of a calming concentration exercise for him.

Derek palms the figure without any hesitation. It’s so quick that nobody else in the room even notices, as Deaton is occupied with a book and Cora’s view is obstructed by Derek's body. Scott never really pays attention anyway. Stiles absent-mindedly picks up another piece of paper while following Derek with his eyes until the Hales are out of sight.

As Stiles’s heartbeat is speeding up with hope, Scott looks at him with concern. “You okay?”

Stiles nods, still looking at the door. He wishes Derek would come back and talk to him but he’ll have to be content with what just happened. Maybe he can speak to Derek, make him understand. _Understand what? That you lied to him for two months when it was in your power to help him? How are you going to explain_ that _?_

“I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait. I’ll come with you,” Scott says immediately.

“No, thanks, man, but I need to be alone for a bit.”

Scott gives him his puppy dog look of understanding, the one that says, _I feel your pain_.

The Camaro is long gone. Stiles drives aimlessly for a while, just thinking. What does it mean that Derek took his ‘gift’? Was he just surprised and acted without thought, a habit from two month spent in close proximity to each other? Did he throw it away as soon as he realized that taking things just because Stiles hands them to him shouldn’t be automatic any longer? Does he hold it and treasure it the way Stiles would if he’d received it from Derek? All Stiles wants is a chance to talk to him, to find out how he’s coping and how much he hates Stiles now, without any interference from Cora or anyone else. And maybe he has forfeited the right to be in Derek's life but he can’t just give up.

 

 

 

When Stiles and Derek were traveling the country, they could barely keep their hands off each other. Their relationship was very physical in more ways than one. And yes, Stiles does miss the sex, very much so, and he doesn’t relish waking up almost every night from very wet dreams. But what he really misses is their closeness. They were almost always touching, holding hands, sitting close enough for their bodies to touch or at least looking at each other when neither was the case. He feels like a huge part of him is no longer there. Until now he’s always scoffed at the idea of being incomplete on your own but now he certainly feels like he lost his 'other half'.

The same goes for their conversations. He can chat with Scott, of course, but it’s not the same. His talks with Derek were different, more intimate even when they weren’t about anything in particular, more fulfilling somehow. And it's his own damned fault that he no longer has that. So he spends some of his time with Scott, playing games, watching movies and eating junk food. Despite the long periods they’ve been apart over the last few years when Stiles was at college, their friendship remains solid.

Whenever his father is home, Stiles aims to be there as well. He owes him that much. And he wants to. In a couple of months he’ll be starting his training on the other side of the country and spare time to visit will be hard to come by. Nevertheless his father is upbeat and bursting with pride.

But mostly Stiles is alone. He’s in the preserve a lot, not really admitting to himself that he’s hoping to run into Derek rather than exercising. He drives past the loft at least twice a day but even when the Camaro is there, he can’t think of any plausible reason to go inside and he really doesn’t feel like humiliating himself in front of Cora, if she even lets him get that far. He would if he thought Derek _wanted_ to see him but he can’t imagine what Derek’s feelings are right now. All he knows is that Deaton’s treatment didn’t work and Derek still can’t remember anything from before the spell.

It’s over a week until he sees Derek again. Stiles is sitting in the coffee shop waiting for Scott to arrive when he sees Derek at the counter ordering a coffee to-go with an adorable smile at the barista. The girl smiles back – who wouldn’t when faced with such beauty? – and Stiles feels an immediate murderous jealousy that he recognizes as patently ridiculous but he doesn’t care. If she hands over her phone number, she’ll have to die. Luckily Derek moves to the far end to wait for his drink phone-number-free. When he takes a look around, their eyes meet and then neither of them seems to be able to look away again. Not that Stiles would even want to try. His heart's pounding and has done since he spotted Derek. Now it cranks up another notch or two. He lifts his free hand in greeting and Derek gives a silent nod of acknowledgement before he leaves.

Afterwards Stiles admonishes himself for not trying for more. He should have spoken to Derek, not just mooned over him like a love-sick school boy. He let a golden opportunity pass him by. For two days he agonizes over what he should do next time they meet. Should he leave it to Derek, as the injured party, to make the first move? Or should he let him know that he wants to talk and then let Derek make the decision? What would he even say?

He can’t make up his mind so when he sees Derek in the cereal aisle of the 7/11 two days later, he hesitates. They look at each other until Stiles smiles in a panicky sort of way and Derek ducks his head in that achingly familiar gesture that makes it impossible to tell if he’s smiling back. He may be. But just as Stiles takes two steps forward, he spots Cora coming around the corner at the end of the aisle and turns on his heel to avoid a confrontation. Yes, he’s a coward but he wants to spend his first conversation with Derek concentrating on what to say and not on arguing with Cora about his right to even speak to her brother.

The next day Stiles is sitting sprawled on the bench outside his father’s office at the sheriff station. He’s come to have lunch with him and is passing the time by playing on his cellphone. When the door to the office opens, he looks up with a grin on his face expecting it to be his dad but almost drops his phone when he recognizes Derek. After batting the damned thing into the air a few times he finally managed to catch it. Derek shows just the hint of a smile before hiding it under his stoic expression but Stiles thinks that being clumsy may just have proved an advantage for the first time in his life. It broke the ice because Derek takes a seat next to him on the bench, still as far from him as the space allows but it’s a start. The sheriff, being the best dad in the world, silently closes his door.

“Hey,” Stiles croaks out. He feels like he’s drowning, his chest tight and painful. If Derek got up now and walked away, Stiles might very well try to hobble him by throwing his arms around his legs. For a moment he has visions of being dragged out of the station on his stomach because naturally he wouldn’t even slow Derek down.

Derek gives a nod of acknowledgement. There’s no recognizable emotion on his face. Somehow he has reverted back to how he was before he lost his memory without actually regaining it. This must be how he’s always coped with disappointment and getting hurt.

“How are you?” Stiles says slightly more in command of his voice. He knows Derek can hear his galloping heartbeat but he doesn’t care. So what if Derek knows Stiles is excited to see him? It’s true.

“Fine. I guess. Still can’t remember anything.”

“But Cora’s filled you in, hasn’t she?”

Derek shrugs. “I mostly googled myself. Cora seems to have spent very little time with me after our family died and she was so young that anything before the fire is vague and unreliable. But hey, luckily the things that happened to me are mostly part of public record.”

Wow, that’s some high-level cynicism that hits Stiles almost like a punch. Derek dropped from life being all sunshine and roses right down to the deepest level of derision by the sounds of it. And who could blame him?

“None of it was your fault,” Stiles says gently.

“Of course, it wasn’t. I know that. Your dad said I knew the hunter who set fire to the house. That maybe she tried to get close to my family through me. But then again, I was only a teenager and she was much older. I must have been an idiot in my previous life. Or I did all my thinking with my dick. Was I a shallow frat boy?”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, you really weren’t. You were very… intense. I didn’t always appreciate it but I mean that in a good way. Shallow is the exact opposite of what you were.”

“It’s weird how everything’s just a like listening to a story. Losing my family must have been a major event in my life. But it’s just like watching a news report or reading about it in the papers. It’s sad but it doesn’t click. Like it’s got nothing to do with me. I thought looking at the police reports, with all the photos would help but there’s nothing. Nada. And Cora’s no help. She’s doesn’t even remember the fire or what happened immediately afterwards. And even if she did… it would be cruel to make her go through that again.”

Stiles didn’t think of that. Who is left to tell Derek about himself? Almost all the witnesses to his life are dead. Cora must have been ten or eleven when the fire happened and afterward she didn’t see her brother until years later and even then she only stayed a few months. She knew so little about him that she asked her uncle for information. The memory gives Stiles a spike of panic.

“Don’t trust Peter,” he blurts out without preamble.

Derek huffs a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I can’t see how I would, given that your dad just told me he killed my sister.”

Well, that’s a relief. It’s not just the fact that Derek won’t fall foul of Peter’s manipulations but also that even in this situation he’s no longer so desperate that he would accept just anyone to regain some semblance of pack and family. “Yeah, trust your instincts. He’s not good people.”

It’s immediately obvious that he said something wrong. Derek gets up, not hastily but determined. Stiles makes a move to also stand up, instinctively hoping to somehow prevent Derek from leaving, but aborts it when Derek gives him an ice-cold look and says, “Yeah, well, _my instincts_ led me to trusting _you_.”

Stiles practically collapses back onto the bench and can’t think of any reply as he watches Derek's retreating back.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

 

Meeting at the vet surgery develops into a routine as Deaton becomes increasingly obsessed with the problem and frustrated enough to try a different approach each day. No matter what ritual or potion or spell he tries, nothing seems to work on Derek's memory. It’s difficult to tell what Derek thinks of it all as he stoically undergoes whatever is required of him and does no more than raise his eyebrows somewhat mockingly at the end to inform them that it didn’t work this time either. For the most part he remains silent.

Stiles is there for every new attempt. He loses heart by maybe the fourth, definitely after the fifth, but he feels responsible for the whole mess somehow and anyway it’s an opportunity to see Derek, so he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Naturally, he’s not able to actually talk to Derek on these occasions because Cora makes it quite clear that that’s never going happen in her presence, plainly demonstrated by physically placing herself between them at all times.

On Day Eight Derek turns up alone. Nobody asks where his sister is as Stiles can practically feel his own relief echoed in Scott and Deaton. However valid her point of view may be, Cora has turned into a bit of an encumbrance. Today Deaton is drawing blood from Derek, luckily the old-fashioned way with a syringe instead of using a ritual knife or some such thing. Then he blends it with some concoction he’s prepared and uses the mixture to draw an intricate pattern on Derek's forehead. Eventually he gently blows some yellowish powder into Derek's face.

Derek drops like a stone. It’s lucky that Scott’s reflexes and strength enable him to catch Derek before he hits the floor and place him on one of the gurneys. Stiles is beginning to think that Deaton really has no idea what he’s doing. Granted, the suspicion has always been there but it’s starting to become pretty obvious that Deaton’s just stumbling around in the dark as much as any of them. He clearly didn’t expect Derek to lose consciousness. But at least it’s some sort of effect after a succession of non-reactions and Stiles doesn’t really want Deaton to give up his efforts because what would they do then?

Derek's under for less than a minute before he opens his eyes again. He looks at Deaton with his familiar arched eyebrows and Deaton sighs in disappointment. Scott looks adoringly bewildered that this man whom he so admires isn’t all he's assumed him to be. Stiles will never get over Scott’s unending capacity for being troubled while never losing hope at the same time. Because Stiles is ready to punch something in frustration at this point.

There doesn’t appear to be any ill effect. Derek jumps off the gurney with his usual agility, nods at everyone and leaves as if none of this has anything to do with him. Stiles lasts about ten seconds before he throws pride to the wind and runs after him, catching up in the parking lot. Derek stops next to the Camaro and looks at him questioningly when he comes to a skidding halt in front of him.

“So how are you, really?” Stiles asks, jumping right into a conversation they were only having in his head.

Derek looks confused as well he might be. “Fine.”

 _Yep, this is going swimmingly._ “So, no Cora today, eh?” Stiles winces a little at how lame it sounds even to his own ears.

Derek’s features darken a little. “What do you want, Stiles?”

“I wanna help. I mean, I wanna know how you are, make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.”

“I know that but… would it be so bad to talk to me? I have no expectations I swear. It’s just…” _I miss you like crazy!_ “I’ll buy you a coffee if you let me.”

“I can get my own coffee,” Derek says coolly.

“It’s a euphemism, Derek. It means, _hey, I wanna spend time with you and if you want that, too, we can hang out in a public place together where either one of us can make an excuse and leave if it becomes too awkward._ ”

For a moment Derek hesitates, even appears to form the beginnings of a smile but then he just gets in his car and drives off.

“Well, that’s obviously a euphemism for _fuck off, Stiles_. Message received loud and clear,” Stiles mutters to himself. He watches the car get to the end of the parking lot, stop at the exit, then reverse and come to a stop next to him with a squeak of the brakes. Stiles doesn’t hesitate for a second. The passenger door is right there so he just opens it and gets in. “You should get your brakes seen to,” he comments, suppressing a grin.

They spend half an hour just talking about Deaton and his failed efforts with both of them finding grim humor in the situation at Deaton’s expense. Then they segue into one of their lazy, spiraling talks, spinning increasingly outlandish ideas on what they should try next, from obtaining unicorn blood to bathe in to building a communication device to summon aliens for help. It’s good to see Derek chuckle and it feels like it did during those two months they were alone together, relaxed and comfortable. Effortless. Intimate.

“So where’s Cora?” Stiles asks eventually.

“I asked her to stay home. She’s kind of crowding me. I know she means well but I don’t need to be constantly told what I used to do. Or asked if I remember anything yet. She always looks so disappointed when I don’t. It’s like I’m constantly failing some kind of test.”

“I’m sure she’s just trying to jog your memory to help you. She loves you.”

“That’s just it. She doesn’t.” There’s a vicious undertone in Derek's voice.

Stiles reels back a little because it sounds very much like Old-Derek, who had a tendency to deny that there could ever be anything good in his life. “She’s your sister. She came all the way from South America because she was worried about you. I think we can safely assume that she cares.”

Derek shrugs. “But it’s not _me_ she loves and cares for, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Cora loves _her brother_ , the one she knew before but that‘s not _me_ any longer. In his place there’s this stranger that she’s never met before. It’s like I’m an impostor and all she wants is her brother back. But for that to happen the me that I am now would have to go away. It’s like she’s constantly telling me that I have no right to be here, that I should hurry up and make room for her brother already… because I’m not him.”

“That’s rough.” And makes so much sense. Stiles never had that problem because in a sense he didn’t mind Derek not regaining his memory as long as Derek was happy.

“And the worst part is that I don’t know her either. I have no memory of her. She doesn’t smell like pack because she’s been with another pack for so long. She expects me to have feelings for her that I simply can’t provide. I’m hurting her and I don’t know how not to do that.”

“It’s not your fault. You can’t be held responsible for other people’s feelings. It’s not as if you’re not trying. And even if you never get your memory back, the person you are _now_ has as much right to exist as the person you were _before_.”

Derek smiles wistfully. “They all do it. Everyone I meet who knew me before has these unrealistic expectations of me. Even if they only knew me in passing. They speak to me and then they wait to see if what they said triggered a memory. And I feel like screaming all the time: I’m a person! I have my own thoughts and ideas… feelings. Why am I not worth a thing when I don’t perform to your expectations?”

“Oh God. Maybe you should.”

“Should what?”

“Maybe you should shout and scream. Make people hear you. You have a right to be heard.”

There’s a long pause where Derek just stirs his coffee that he hasn’t even tried yet. Stiles wants to reach out and touch him. He’s so used to being able to do that, his touch being allowed and welcome, that it makes him ache to refrain. A few times he catches himself as his fingers move seemingly on their own accord. In the end he literally sits on them to stop himself.

“Don’t _you_ want me to be the Derek from before?”

Stiles smiles although Derek isn’t looking at him. “Did I give the impression at any point that it was important to me? You’re you. That’s enough for me. Also, I’m cheating in a way because you loved me before you lost your memory and you loved me afterwards. It may have been slightly different but there was an _us_ before and an _us_ after. Even though you don’t remember me from before I meant just as much to you and vice versa. Nothing else mattered much.”

And finally Derek looks at him with that soft expression he wore so many times on so many occasions in so many places. It was the one constant on their journey, affectionate, warm, private, as if in all that time the only thing that counted was them. It mirrored Stiles’s feelings perfectly. It still does. God, he loves this man!

But suddenly Derek's features change and his eyes take on that cold aspect that he so often displays nowadays. Stiles wants to tell him to stop, to go back to the moment before, to not sever their connection. Just stop thinking what he’s thinking. _We were good. We were talking and getting close and everything was moving in the right direction._ Now it’s like there’s a sudden cold draft blowing down their fragile link. “Derek,” he says pleadingly, his voice already cracking under the knowledge that this is over.

“I can’t do this.” Derek gets up and leaves without another word.

 

 

 

After that Derek stops coming to the surgery. Stiles waits most of the next day but despite Deaton texting him repeatedly Derek doesn’t show up to try yet another remedy. Initially Stiles is disappointed and worried. This is the only contact with Derek for him. He doesn’t want to lose that. Time is running out as it is with only a few weeks left until he needs to move to the other side of the country.

But the very next day he meets Derek in the coffee shop again. Stiles has just come in for a triple caffeine shot to-go but when he turns after picking it up, Derek’s just there, in the line, watching him. Stiles waits until Derek has his order and they proceed to one of the tables as if they’ve arranged to meet here.

“You’ve given up on finding a cure?” Stiles asks after they’ve sat down.

“Not really. Just given up on Deaton. He’s not very good, is he?”

“Yeah, for the longest time I thought he was just holding back. That maybe he’s afraid to pass on knowledge we’re not ready for, blah, blah, blah, you know the spiel or maybe he lives by some code that prevents him from saying things, secrets of the occult and all that. But nowadays I think he’s just full of shit and just likes to feel important. That weird pseudo-mystic stuff he spouts on a regular basis is way over the top.”

Derek smiles in agreement. “How did you meet him? Do you know how _I_ met him?”

It’s the beginning of a series of daily coffee mornings. Without mentioning it in so many words, Stiles goes to the coffee shop around the same time every day. He gets himself a couple of drinks and then plays on his phone or reads until Derek turns up a little while later, equally without saying that he would. Both of them pretend it’s accidental and neither of them is fooled in the slightest.

Stiles talks about the people he knows, people Derek knows but has forgotten. It’s his own perspective of what happened after Scott got bitten and – _oh boy!_ – does it look different in hindsight. He can’t believe how naïve they were, how cocky and how lucky that Derek was around. Even if he didn’t appreciate it at the time, he makes sure that Derek knows that he does so now. He apologizes for leading to Derek's arrest, not once but twice, and also for the way Scott treated Derek on some occasions because he feels he should have argued his best friend out of it. But there was always something unsettling about Derek. It just took him an embarrassingly long time to work out it was attraction. Being blinded by his crush on Lydia, he didn’t recognize the genuine feelings he developed because they didn’t hit him like a sledgehammer.  

They talk about everything. How Stiles felt about people then and how he feels about them now. And most of all how Derek fits into the picture. Stiles is careful with the stuff he hasn’t witnessed personally, stories he heard about Derek's past, and always makes sure that Derek knows that it’s just hearsay or Stiles’s own opinion. Usually it leads to them speculating about the things they don’t know. How come Deaton was the Hale pack emissary without Derek knowing about it? Was Peter crazy and malicious even before the accident or did the experience turn him? How did Derek become aware of the teenagers he turned into his betas when he wasn’t running in their circles?

It’s easy because none of it pains Derek. He can discuss even the most horrific incidents without being affected because it’s like it happened to someone else. Stiles doesn’t need to sugarcoat or tread carefully. He’s pleased to see Derek's righteous indignation because without his guilt he’s quite aware that he’s been mistreated and betrayed by way too many people. For far too long Derek has taken what happened to him as his fault, as some kind of flaw in his character, and it’s only when he looks at it from an outsider’s point of view that he can see the truth.

They have their own table in the corner, which is too small to be popular and their conversations feel very private despite the public setting. But it always ends the same way. They go from an exchange of information to banter to a tête-à-tête and suddenly there are long pauses, soft looks and gentle smiles. And then something in Derek snaps, making him shut down abruptly and leave.

Stiles is left increasingly frustrated. They seem to be getting so far and then Derek puts on the brakes or rather pulls the emergency stop. Moments later Stiles finds himself alone with his coffee and a heart that never stops breaking all over again.

If he didn’t feel so guilty he wouldn’t let it go on for so long but he reckons he owes Derek for deceiving him for two months. So Stiles allows him to run off whenever he can’t cope with his feelings knowing that they can try again the next day until one day, after over a week, he just cracks. He watches Derek leave the coffee shop _again_ thinking how hard it must be for Derek to go through all he’s going through and how much he’d like to be there for him. And then his next thought is, _Fuck it! Enough is enough! It’s hard for you, too._

He races after Derek, closing in on him near the small park down the road. “Why do you do it?” he yells before he’s quite reached him, making Derek – and some passers-by – turn around. Derek stops and looks at him questioningly. “Why do you do it?” Stiles repeats a little quieter now that they’re in talking distance. “Why do you meet me every day? Why are we doing this every day if you already know you don’t want to get back together? I can’t be the only one who can give you information. If it’s so hard for you to be with me, why bother?”

Derek still looks as upset as he did when he left the coffee shop. “You think I should just forget what you did and start over?”

“Yes. No. I mean that I get why you’re disappointed in me. I get that you think I should have told you. I've told you how sorry I am. I wanted to give you time to be without this shitty life that you had. And I couldn’t ask you if that was okay with you because that would have defeated the purpose.”

“You had no right to make decisions for me!”

“No, I didn’t. I admit it. It was terrible of me to do that to you. But I did for you, not for myself, not so I could get laid or whatever your sister thinks my motivation was. I was getting laid by you already. I didn’t need to lie to you for that.”

They both glare at a guy in a suit who’s walking by looking scandalized after overhearing their exchange until he hastily turns away to mind his own business.

“I never thought that,” Derek then continues, still a little heated. “That was Cora’s idea. Personally I have no idea why you did it. I was happy. That’s all I remember. It’s the fact that you lied to me that’s bothering me.”

“I get that, too. And again, I’m sorry, without any reservations. I was wrong. I’m sorry. But if you can’t get past that, why do you meet me every day? Why make me hope every day that today may be the day that you forgive me? Why are you putting me through that every. single. day? Is it revenge? I hurt you and this is the only way to get back at me? Is that it, Derek?”

For a moment Derek looks so devastated that Stiles wants a do-over. _What were you thinking? How can you accuse Derek of something like that? Derek isn’t capable of inflicting that kind of pain on anyone deliberately, he wasn’t before he lost his memory and he isn’t now._ Stiles wants to be back in the coffee shop, having decided to give Derek the time and space he needs instead of confronting him. But there are no do-overs in real life and he really fucked up all his chances this time.

Derek's expression closes off like a shutter coming down. His voice is glacial. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to just be in the same room with you? Do you know how much I miss you, whether you’re right here or a million miles away? Don’t you realize that you’re the only person in the whole world that I actually _know_? And not in the sense of _I know you so well you’re the only one because I love you_ or in the biblical sense. You are _literally_ the _only person_ I _know_. I lost my memory and you were the only one I got to know in my new life. Everyone else I meet are just people I meet. They’re just hearsay and forgotten memories. You’re the only one who’s _real_. The only one I have memories of even if it's only from the last few months. You’re the only one I have actual feelings for. The only one who knows the new me. You think it’s hard for _you_ to meet me and not be close? Try living in a world where you only know _one single person_ out of seven billion and everyone else is a stranger, where there’s only _one single person_ you have a connection with, only one person you love. And then imagine that that person lied to you your _whole life_. I‘m not putting _you_ through anything, Stiles. I’m putting _myself_ through it every day because I can’t do anything else, because without you I’m completely alone, because despite everything you’re the only one that counts. Because you don’t stop loving someone just because they betrayed you. Now go back to your life with your dad and your friends and I’ll go back to my empty world.”

With that, Derek walks away and only the tense set of his shoulders gives away how hard it was for him to get all of that out. Stiles is frozen in place. He feels crushed, not just for himself but even more so for Derek, and he knows he won’t rest until he’s found a way to make this right or at least a little better, better for Derek, no matter the cost to himself.

 

 

 

“Stiles, wake up,” his dad says in an exasperated voice. “How late was it last night?”

“Don’t know,” Stiles mumbles, lifting his head off the desk and blinking at the floating bubbles on his computer screen. “Last time I looked it was four o’clock.”

“This has to stop, Son. I know you’re desperate for a solution but you won’t be any help to Derek if you run yourself into the ground doing it.”

“I know, Dad.” Stiles noisily pulls in air through his nose, blinking a few times to wake up his eyes, which seem to be lagging behind, and looks around for the coffee his father usually provides. It’s not there. “I’ll try and get a nap in after lunch. I just need to…” He’s already stroking over the mouse pad to wake up his laptop and look at the three emails he has pending.

“What you _need_ is go and shower. And open the window.” The sheriff walks towards the door. “Oh, and by the way, Derek's downstairs so you’d better be quick.”

“ _What?_ ” Stiles bangs his knee under the desk as he jumps up from his chair and has to grit his teeth.

“I have to leave for work in twenty minutes. I'll keep him entertained until then. Hurry up.”

It takes a moment for Stiles to realize that this isn’t a joke. When he walks to his door he can hear the familiar rumble of Derek's voice as he accepts a coffee in their kitchen. _Oh fuck!_ Stiles rushes under the shower which he neglected for a couple of days in favor of doing research. By now he's called in every favor anybody ever owed him.

His dad is just closing the front door on his way out when Stiles slides into the kitchen on the smooth tiles. Derek’s leaning casually against the counter where the breakfast bar is and just talks with his eyebrows when Stiles slips and nearly falls over. Feeling like a complete idiot, he manages to walk with reasonable dignity the rest of the way to pour some coffee. He occupies himself with getting just the right milk-to-sugar ratio and mutters, “Uhm, hi, Derek,” as nonchalantly as he can.

Derek has been MIA for five days or rather he hasn’t been to the coffee shop for that time. Not that Stiles is still waiting for him there in the mornings. Not at all. That would be pathetic when it’s blindingly evident that Derek has abandoned their ‘accidental’ meetings. Stiles just likes to drink his coffee there. It has nothing to do with hoping Derek might turn up when he has obviously decided that Stiles isn't much more help than Deaton. Which makes it so much more remarkable that he’s here. Derek hasn’t been to Stiles’s house in years so it must mean something. _Right?_

“What did you do?” Derek asks without any overture.

At his tone, Stiles turns to face him. “ _Do?_ Nothing yet. I’m still doing research at the moment. It’s looking quite good. At least I have a lot of suggestions I can look into. Some are more promising than others of course, but I’ll check them all just in case. Then maybe…” _Oh god, shut up! You’re babbling like a demented school boy._

“What… did… you… do?”

“Like I said. Nothing yet. Why?”

“Because I remember.”

There’s a sudden stillness in the kitchen, which makes the ticking of the wall clock and the humming of the fridge appear overly loud.

“You… _remember_?”

“Yes.” Derek seems so incredibly calm it’s infuriating.

“How… When… What…?”

“I’ve had some flashes over the last week or so. I thought they were just my imagination. Wishful thinking or maybe I’d thought about something you told me about myself so much that I imagined I remembered it. And then yesterday I woke up and it was all there. In glorious Technicolor and Sensurround sound.”

“You remember _everything_? Like, everything from your life, from before the spell? What about after the spell? Is that still there?”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“That’s… great… right?” Stiles has learned long ago never to make any assumptions about Derek's feelings. He doesn’t always react the way you’d expect. “I mean, you’re pleased that everything’s back, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose I am.”

“Suppose?”

“No, I _am_. It’s just a lot to take in. It’s a little overwhelming... Imagine putting on two hundred pounds overnight. This is the mental equivalent. Everything’s a little weird.”

Stiles nods and walks over to the table with his coffee to sit down. Derek doesn’t move. It’s impossible to tell what he’s feeling. “How did Cora take it?”

Derek shrugs. “You’re the first one I told. I thought it was something you did because I always had those flashes after I spoke to you. Never with anyone else. But maybe it just came back on its own.”

It’s just typical that Derek kept this to himself for a whole day, trying to work through it on his own. Then again, he did come here to talk to Stiles about it. That’s new. That’s something New-Derek did. What does that mean? And what the hell is he going to call _this_ Derek? Derek 3.0? Stiles wishes Derek would sit down with him. The small kitchen space feels like a huge chasm between them. “How do you feel about it all? I suppose… Does it change anything?” He wants to asks about _them_ , how it changes things between _the two of them_ , but he can’t get out the words. Derek's aloofness is almost answer enough anyway.

“I’ll cope. I’ll take a few days to acclimatize and then I’ll pick up where I left off.”

Stiles pushes through his growing agitation. “And will you pick up where _we_ left off as well?”

Derek scratches his head in that slightly befuddled way he never had before the spell. “For what it’s worth, I think I understand why you did it. It was a tough call to make. You could either tell me about my oh so tragic background or you could give me some breathing space from that. You didn’t know it would last so long and we were already on the way home when Cora turned up so you were planning on owning up. I have to give you points for that.”

“And do those points add up enough to make you forgive me?” It sounds pathetically like the plea that it is even though Stiles does his best to give it levity. Sadly he’s too afraid of the answer to pull it off.

“Not really. I could maybe forgive you if I could believe that your motivation was purely to give me a holiday from my life. And maybe it was to begin with. You were certainly the one person, then and now, who was happy with the new me. But that’s just it. I’m asking myself why you didn’t mind that the old me was gone. And what it comes down to is this: the old me wasn’t good enough for you. I’ve always been hard work. I know that. You wanted someone else, someone easier, so you were happy to play along. And what does that say about your feelings for me, eh? Now that the old me is back I’d just be your second choice, something you’d have to put up with again because there are some parts of me that you actually like.”

Stiles nearly chokes on his coffee, of which he regrettably took a large gulp before Derek started speaking and then was too aghast to swallow. Derek moves his untouched coffee mug from the counter into the sink, tipping it out and filling it with water to soak it. Stiles watches him in stunned silence. His brain takes a few moments to compute what Derek just said and it’s not operating at full capacity. It seems to be stuck on a _wait-just-a-god-damned-minute-what?_ loop.

When Derek's finished by the sink and turns around, no doubt to say goodbye and leave, Stiles gets up hurriedly and plants himself roughly between Derek and the door. This conversation isn’t over, not by a long shot.

“Ask me!” Stiles demands.

“Ask you what?” Derek sounds almost amused.

Naturally Stiles is aware that he doesn’t present a significant obstacle to Derek but he also knows with certainty that Derek would never manhandle him in any serious manner anymore, hasn’t done since high school. “Ask me why I did it.”

“You said. You wanted me to be free. To not have to think about my life for a while.”

“Yes, but why did I want you to free? Ask me why I wanted _that_!”

"What?”

“I lied to you. I didn’t do it for any lofty reasons. It was purely selfish. So… ASK ME!”

Derek huffs an irritated laugh. “Okay. Why?”

Stiles is incensed now, that Derek’s not taking him quite seriously as if they’ve never been in a genuine sincere and honest relationship but also that everyone’s assuming that he did what he did for almost frivolous reasons, in particular that Derek’s assuming that. “Because you broke your fucking neck, Derek! And you broke your neck because you rushed into the situation with no thought for your own safety. And I couldn’t take it anymore! I just couldn’t! I was so fucking scared and so angry with you! Your life is worth something! It’s worth _everything_ to me! And it should be worth something to you. And I was sick and tired of you thinking so little of yourself that you never considered me, how I would feel if something happened to you. You think _my_ feelings are fucked-up? What about how fucked up _your_ feelings are? You said you loved me but I wasn’t worth shit to you. _I_ wasn’t enough _for you_! At least not enough to take the tiniest precaution not to get hurt so I wouldn’t have to deal with losing you. I just wasn’t a consideration.”

He has to take a few long breaths to calm down before he ends up ranting and raving himself into a panic attack. Derek is staring at him with wide, astonished eyes.

“It was never about you, Stiles. I just want to keep you safe because I can’t lose you. I wouldn’t know how to survive.”

“ _Really_? Then why don’t you do me the same courtesy? I can’t lose you either. And that’s the reason I let it go on for so long. Because the new you was looking after himself as much as he was looking after me. It was normal. And healthy. We were on a level playing field for the first time. And when we went to confront Larry you were so careful that neither one of us would be put in danger. Because you valued your life as you should. I couldn’t make you do that. You had to relearn that for yourself.” He takes another deep breath. “And you know what? If you keep that concern for yourself and it helps you stay alive and well but you can’t forgive me then I’ll accept that. It’s worth that much to me. I’ll learn to cope without you somehow and still call it a win. Because I love you that much.”

As much as he'd like to stay where he is and argue with Derek some more and work on changing his mind, he can’t. His breathing is erratic as his anxiety is threatening to crush him. He lurches back to his seat on wobbly legs and sits down heavily. For a few moments even Derek becomes insignificant. Placing his shaking hands flat on the table Stiles concentrates on his breathing, trying to imagine an easy flow of air into his lungs, watching his chest expand and contract a few times until finally his breathing works without effort again.

Somehow Derek has moved over and is kneeling next to him, not touching but murmuring calming words that don’t seem to make a lot of sense but make Stiles feel oh so much better. Derek trails off when it becomes apparent that Stiles has himself under control again. “Are you okay, now? Can you stop scaring me like that? Please?”

“Only if you stop scaring me with your stupid recklessness,” Stiles whispers. Derek's so close that Stiles can easily lay his head on his shoulder. He’s so fucking tired.

“I’ll try.” Derek's arms come up, one around Stiles’s waist and the other to place a hand in his hair, gently stroking it.

“Promise?”

“Yeah. You know, I learned something from not knowing who I was. It reminded me of how I was when I was younger, when I had hope. I’ve been drifting for years now. Then you came back from college and we got together but I couldn’t trust it. I don’t mean I couldn’t trust you. I mean I couldn’t trust that it was possible to be happy again, that I deserved it.”

Stiles lifts his head to look into Derek's eyes. “You deserve the world, Derek. I can’t understand why you don’t see what I see when I look at you. You’re amazing. Sometimes I look at you and can’t believe my luck.”

“Then you should understand what I mean when I say I couldn’t trust it.”

“Maybe. But I don’t get why you’re not proud of yourself. You had so much shit thrown at you and none of it was your fault. And still you didn’t turn cold or indifferent or evil, like Peter did. You should be so proud of how you survived, and how you coped and how you turned into this awesome person.”

Derek ducks his head in embarrassment. “Well, I spent a good while just listening to my own life story. And you know what, not to sound big-headed or anything, but I thought that, too. I was looking at my life without any feelings, just the facts, and I just thought, wow, how am I even alive and sane and a good enough person for you to fall in love with me? Because when I couldn’t remember anything you were kind of the benchmark for everything.”

“And now?”

Derek looks at him through his eyelashes and smiles shyly. “Still the same. You’ve been my benchmark for quite a while now. There’s a reason you became my anchor. You were long before I lost my memory... So when you let me just carry on without my memory, that wasn’t because I was easier to get on with than before?”

“Of course not. It was different. It wasn’t quite you. But I loved you before and I loved without your memories and I kept wondering if I was just getting to see a different version of you. Yes, you were different but the basics were the same. You looked the same and your character was the same. I think it’s like hypnosis. You can’t hypnotize someone into doing stuff that goes against their inner values. So even without your memories you were still you in principle.”

“I do feel different,” Derek admits. “Even having my memories back, and my feelings, it’s still different.”

Stiles doesn’t really want to ask because he might not like the answer. “Different how?” _Please, don’t say you feel different about me! Please, please, please not that._

“I don’t know how to describe it. I feel… lighter. In both senses of the word.”

Stiles closes his eyes as the relief that settles over him threatens to become overwhelming. He did good. In the end he achieved what he was aiming for. It’s been a tough few weeks, full of fear and doubt, all based on a vague hope that it might do Derek some good. He meant what he said, he would gladly give up his own happiness if only Derek would learn to enjoy and treasure his.

“Stiles?”

Stiles opens his eyes and smiles at Derek. “Hhm?”

“You know when I said I feel lighter? That was metaphorical. My knees are killing me on these tiles. Can we maybe go to your room? Preferably to your bed?”

Stiles’s heart starts its usual staccato when he’s around Derek, making Derek smile a little. “Well, Mr. Hale, I’d thought you’d never ask.” He doesn’t need to lean forward more than a couple of inches or so to kiss Derek gently on the lips. It’s more like the sealing of an understanding than anything passionate but it’s significant to both of them, like a renewal of vows that were never spoken but always implicit between them.

They do go to bed and lying in each others’ arms makes Stiles forget everything around him. There’s nothing quite like being this close to Derek, together as one. Stiles is sleepy now, all his turmoil and agitation for weeks making him crash heavily. Derek doesn’t seem to mind as he settles close to Stiles, his nose against the back of his neck. The sex can wait. There will be plenty of time now. All the time in the world.

 

 

 

Stiles stores his bag in the trunk of the car and turns to give his dad a long hug. It’s not the first time they’ve been separated by Stiles’s career choices but he feels like this is different because he’s not just going out of state but practically as far away from Beacon Hills as possible while staying in the country. Strangely enough his dad’s taking it better than he is. Stiles will always be the worrier in the family.

“I’ll be home for Christmas or you can come out.” When he’s not on site at the Academy, he’ll be living in a small rented house in Springfield, Virginia. Unlike during his time in college, when he stayed in the dorms, this place has room for visitors. At last night’s farewell party, everyone said their goodbye’s and used the opportunity to lay claim to the guestroom for future visits. Except Lydia – home for her mother’s third wedding – who declared that she wouldn’t want to be seen dead in a house that no doubt would have all the chic of a frat house. She’d be staying in a hotel during her visits, thank you very much. Some things never change. It’s kind of comforting.

His father turns and puts a hand on Derek's shoulder. They haven’t quite progressed to fatherly hugs yet. Stiles thinks it’s respect on both sides rather than disinclination. It won’t take much longer though because that’s how his father is. “I won’t embarrass my son by asking you to look after him.”

Derek smirks. “No need.”

“Exactly. I knew we’d understand each other.”

And there it is, the casual half-shoulder hug that men exchange when they don’t want to get too emotional, complete with a few hearty back slaps. Stiles shakes his head and rolls his eyes mainly to cover for Derek, who seems a little overwhelmed. “It’s no less embarrassing just because you don’t say the actual words. I’m with the FBI now. I don’t need anyone to look after me.”

The sheriff releases Derek, giving him a wink and turns to hug Stiles one more time. “Nobody should ever scoff at being looked after. I don’t.”

“You scoff plenty,” Stiles laughs, while Derek raises a hand in goodbye and gets into the car. Stiles gives his dad another tight squeeze. “I’ll see you soon, Dad.”

The sheriff lets go and smiles. “I am so proud of you.”

Ten minutes later they’re passing the Beacon Hills boundary, still talking about the party last night. Stiles is pleased that over the last few weeks Derek has gotten closer to Scott and his pack even though he’ll never be part of it. One of the reasons Derek trusted Stiles when he didn’t have his memories was because Stiles smelled like pack to him. Stiles likes to think it’s because they’ve formed their own little pack by now. For Derek pack and family always overlapped, so it’s an indication of how deep his feelings for Stiles go, whereas Stiles values family above all, both natural and found. Scott will always be his brother but Derek is so much more to him. He loves that his dad approves and reciprocally Derek has accepted the sheriff as pack already.

The general consensus among the people involved is that Stiles somehow brought Derek's memories back, despite Stiles vehemently denying that it could have been anything he did – mainly because he hadn’t done anything yet. He has his own little theory which delves into psychology more than the supernatural. He thinks that Derek subconsciously blocked his own memories when the spell wore off naturally early on. And who wouldn’t understand that when what he had to look back on was mainly murder and mayhem – for which he blamed himself.

Stiles has strong opinions on who should be held responsible for what happened in Derek's life. These strong opinions were at the forefront of everything he told Derek about himself. He emphasized at every opportunity how Derek was mistreated and betrayed by people he trusted. Maybe some of it stuck with Derek. Or maybe it was simply the fact that he looked at it objectively for the first time. Whatever it was, Derek has lost a lot of his gloomy outlook in life. He smiles more readily and last night everybody was smiling, albeit a little surprised, when they witnessed Derek's full body laugh for the first time since they’ve known him. Stiles, of course, was already familiar with it but he nevertheless felt a mixture of pride, relief and deep love at that moment. Things will turn out just fine, as long as they’re together and he’s determined that being together will last forever.

Stiles leans over to change the music on the car stereo, earning himself a demonstrative harrumph. He looks at Derek, whose eyebrows are almost meeting halfway up his forehead in a _what-do-you-think-you’re-doin’_ expression. “Driver picks the music.”

Stiles nods in apparent assent. “Oh, okay.” He pulls out his phone. “I'll let you choose the music. I’ll just look through my videos over here. Let’s see. Oh, look what we have here. A video of you singing very loudly and engaging in an activity that I believe is commonly known as headbanging. Now… if I just go into my contacts and select all and then attach this little beauty…”

“Don’t you dare send that”

Stiles grins. “So you were saying about who picks the music…?”

Derek looks at him in mock outrage. “You little shit. Are you blackmailing me?”

“It appears so… _baby_.”

Derek winces at the facetious endearment. “Well, it’s reassuring to know that law enforcement will be in good hands with you.”

“You bet your ass it will,” Stiles says and changes the song.

 

 

 

_Fin._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


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